Virginia? A GOP governor is no surprise there. Virginia is another case of the nutrolls running things, and more and more Virginians are tired of the crappy roads and general ability of a few to dictate tax and social policy to the many.

The district in Upstate New York? The GOP which has long been strong in Upstate is not the same as the national GOP, and the national organization is close to civil war. It’s indirectly about Obama, in the sense that the wingnuts are hell-bent on shouting down anybody else, and they’re intent on using the current insecurity to push their agenda in any way possible.

Look back to Ohio last year. “Joe” the “Plumber”? There’s never been an explanation of how somebody with an outstanding case (failure to provide proof of insurance, and failure to pay fine for same) in an Arizona municipal court managed to get a driver’s license in Ohio. He went by Sam in AZ, but Joe in OH, and the only way I can see that he would be able to do this is by having two SSNs. Ohio’s governor fired a supervisor at Job and family Services for doing a check on him, but our DEMOCRAT governor has done nothing to address the simple question of why this man has a license in apparent violation of the Ohio Revised Code? Strickland has spent three years backing down from the GOP. Obama has gotten things done, but his style has also left a large percentage of the population with a feeling that the country is flying apart. Fear is easy to manipulate, and that’s what the far right does. (There is no far left in the US, really never has been.)

Just as Ohio has been misgoverned into the ground by the GOP, and the Dems have been afraid to challenge the GOP for fear of losing elections, so Obama has a similar problem. Obama comes across as an appeaser of the right–he has nice words about a change from the past eight years, but he doesn’t present a clear plan. He indicates a willingness to change the status quo without any clear direction, even though his actions have been far more muted, and it leaves a sense of far greater instability. Look at Germany: the military defeat and economic disarray from WW1 resulted in a profound destabilization of German society. Everyone didn’t suffer, but enough did that ultimately the Weimar government fell from its inability to provide a sense of overall stability. Russia? It’s not too much of a reach to say that there was a stronger civil society in the early 90s than there is today. Russian culture has a long history of preferring the stability of brutality to the chaos of “democracy.” My dissatisfaction with Obama stems from his evident inability to understand that a sense of instability can push people to grab for anything that restores stability–no matter how bad it is. I really don’t want to see the US start on a seesaw like Israel. I suspect that, in many areas, the GOP is going to put up candidates as far right as it takes to hold the seat. It’s populism, not democracy, and the only Dems who have shown any historical ability to be equally ruthless are the urban political machines. Those are gone, and instead we have bloodless technocrats like Obama. Detached, arid intellectualism does not address the heart and the gut. That’s what people are hungry for, that’s where Obama did a fantastic job on the campaign trail, and that’s where he must push himself and his party if he wants to see this country change itself in a more positive direction.

Hardly.

A Republican victory in NJ reflects the state of the State’s economy, which Corzine has extremely limited control over.

A Republican victory in VA reflects the pretty poor campaigning on the part of Deeds; he’s made so many poor decisions in his campaign it’s almost laughable that he could win.

A Conservative victory in NY-23 isn’t unexpected. A Democrat hasn’t been elected in that area since the civil war.

Republican victories in any of these races should be expected, not because of any over-exaggerated outrage by the conservative minority, but because the Republican candidates would have been more likely to win anyway.